


hope is the thing with feathers (and i will rip them off)

by Odaigahara



Series: discord, i'm howling at the moon [7]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1930s, Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Angel Morality | Patton Sanders, Angst with a Happy Ending, Cannibalism, Demon Deceit | Janus Sanders, Fallen Angels, Hell, Hurt Anxiety | Virgil Sanders, Lies, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-16 10:55:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28705509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Odaigahara/pseuds/Odaigahara
Summary: There’s a curled up figure in a crater at the pier. Not close enough for magma to come rushing in, thankfully, but enough that Janus can see molten rock lapping lazily at the crater’s edges, cooling into seeping gray striations. Much closer, and the angel will burn up like paraffin.The figure has his head in his hands, white wings slumped behind him. His feathers are still well-formed, ash-choked as they are, but Janus senses agony in his grace. “Knock knock,” he calls, mantling his wings to look less threatening. The fallen angel doesn’t rise. Janus swallows his fear and adds, “Common etiquette rules that you’re supposed to saywho’s there.”“I know how knock-knock jokes work,” the exile says, voice higher than Janus expected. “They’ve opened a lot of doors for me in the past.”*Or:In the great Hellish city of Pandaemonium, a demon takes a fallen angel into his home.
Relationships: Anxiety | Virgil Sanders/Deceit | Janus Sanders, Deceit | Janus Sanders & Morality | Patton Sanders
Series: discord, i'm howling at the moon [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1884838
Comments: 14
Kudos: 96
Collections: TSS Fanworks Collective





	hope is the thing with feathers (and i will rip them off)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alicat54c](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alicat54c/gifts).



> TW's at end notes!
> 
> For Alicat in return for an amazing bit of fanart!! Go stare at it at https://thereibi-art.tumblr.com/post/640055058805997568/double-double-toil-and-void-this-art-is-made-for 
> 
> Thank you also to alicat for beta reading!

Janus feels the angel fall from all the way across Pandaemonium, past the tenements and the warehouses of celestial weapons, the minor demons’ mansions and the fallen hovels. He feels it because it’s a tremor, not a change in the air like he expected: the sort of enveloping shake that happened in the old days when the fallen weren’t foot soldiers but generals, furious and proud.

Too furious, with an impact like that. Janus might not be able to get close enough to speak before he’s vaporized. 

Unfortunately, he doesn’t have a choice. Janus squeezes his eyes shut against the flash-bang whiteness in the sky, scaled wings twitching defensively over his shoulders, and tries to pinpoint the location of impact. Angelic grace is potent, stronger than liquor and sharper than mint, a scouring on the tongue. Janus once remembered it like mead, sweet and heady. 

_Gotcha_. Janus takes flight, soaring high to catch the thermals, and follows the trail of smoking buildings across the eastern edge of Hell’s greatest city. The manors are in an uproar, winged figures boiling into the smoke-rusted sky; undoubtedly they’ll now wander the streets, tearing up any imp or human soul they put eyes on, until their bloodlust is sated and they feel they’ve made some sort of point. Minor demons are so obsessed with proving their strength. 

The fires in the warehouse produce so much hot air that it spirals upwards, bearing Janus aloft when he tries to descend. He has to bank like a moron to land on a rooftop, huffing out a breath at the impact. A pair of human souls startle back when he lands, and one of them, little more than a child, reaches a hand out to touch a wing. Janus does her the favor of not amputating it like literally any other demon would have and scurries down the sorry excuse for a fire escape, taking the final two stories in a spread-winged leap.

Most souls are staying huddled in their tenements, ashamed or prudent enough to want to avoid catching an angel’s eye. That means the streets are deserted as Janus makes his way down the final blocks, towards the wharf and the magma sea, and feels the rain of vaporized rock on his face.

Dear _Sin_ , what a mess. Janus doesn’t remember the last time an angelfall caused such a commotion. 

There’s a curled up figure in a crater at the pier. Not close enough for magma to come rushing in, thankfully, but enough that Janus can see molten rock lapping lazily at the crater’s edges, cooling into seeping gray striations. Much closer, and the angel will burn up like paraffin.

The figure has his head in his hands, white wings slumped behind him. His feathers are still well-formed, ash-choked as they are, but Janus senses agony in his grace. “Knock knock,” he calls, mantling his wings to look less threatening. The fallen angel doesn’t rise. Janus swallows his fear and adds, “Common etiquette rules that you’re supposed to say _who’s there_.”

“I know how knock-knock jokes work,” the exile says, voice higher than Janus expected. “They’ve opened a lot of doors for me in the past.”

Janus’s eyebrows rise to his hairline. He could take the bait- maybe a pun about hands or knuckles, or being welcomed somewhere- no, damn it, focus. He doesn’t see a weapon. “Don’t tell me you were thrown from heaven for wordplay."

“Not for that,” the angel agrees, downcast. “Are you here to capture and torture me?”

“That _doesn’t_ sound like a great deal of effort, especially considering how at the moment you still have grace and could smite me with a word.” 

“I won’t,” the angel mumbles. “I’m.” Whatever he means to say, it stops there. He levers himself upright with what looks like great care, legs trembling, and his knees collapse. 

“Careful!” Janus is shouldering him upright before his conscious mind can think better of it. The old reflex makes his lips draw back, but he doesn’t let go until the angel has his weight under him; if the downy idiot falls _again_ , the tips of his wings could hit magma. Janus has no use for an _injured_ angel. 

“Oh,” the stupid thing says at his touch, blinking up at him. His eyes are the blue of an untouched lake, so currentless it mirrors the sky. “Do you love me?”

Janus jerks back like _he’s_ dipped his wings in lava. “What? Yes!” Fuck. “I’m _not_ called Deceit, and I _definitely_ meant that. I don’t ever lie, it’s against my religion.”

The angel pulls his wings in, shaking them once to rid them of dirt. Ash drifts off them like snowflakes. “That’s good,” he says, not letting go of Janus’s eyes. His gaze begins to feel like concentrated sunlight, focused through a magnifying glass to sear and burn. Janus is frozen. If he dies here- he _can't_ die here-

“My covert loved me,” the angel says, and drops his gaze. Janus’s wings shiver with relief. “So that's okay, I guess. I'm Patton. Is it true that demons don’t use names?”

Only to family, or lovers. Only to someone so close they feel like another limb, sewn on with a careful hand so your blood circulates in tandem, so everyone and their deceased mother knows where to hit so it hurts most. “It is. And that’s not a lie, by the way. I’m not always deceitful.”

“Then why are you here?” Patton asks, tilting his head. “Do you know what I did?”

Janus snorts. “Am I supposed to?”

“I lied,” Patton says, cold and quiet. “So actually, I think you probably are.”

*

Janus takes the angel home, to an anemic mansion with walls the color of stained teeth and dark-curtained windows. It’s at the edge of the tenements, leaning nauseously to one side like an invalid; he affords the hulking thing by virtue of fighting off anyone who challenges him for it, which is completely sustainable and not at all stressful as fuck. The angel’s eyes widen as they approach it. “You live _there?”_

“Not all of us reside in the lap of luxury, but I prefer to at least sit at its feet,” Janus snaps, flying up to the roof to lever aside a false tile. He motions the angel in. His new meal ticket has to winch his wings tight to fit through; Janus slips in after him, vaguely amazed at the degree of trust or apathy required to enter a dark space with a demon at your back, and adds, “I’ve got a couple of spare rooms on this floor. Don’t ever go downstairs; there aren’t any exits there, and those rooms are private. If I find you there, I won’t hesitate to throw you out on the street.”

“Okay,” Patton says, but his face clouds with confusion. “How is this different from the street?”

“There’s a roof _and_ four walls, barring complications,” Janus sneers, “and it’s a much better place for making the transition. If you wait, your grace will expend itself on the upkeep of feathers that are already doomed, and you’ll come out the other side as barely more than an imp. It’s much more advisable to accept the process and work your way through it. If you can get it over with in less than a week, you might even come out as someone formidable.”

“Is that why I’m here?” the angel asks, far too perceptive. “You need a formidable friend?”

“I need an angel’s feathers,” Janus snarls. “If I’m correct, that puts this little arrangement purely in the category of a _win-win_.”

He waves Patton to a spare room and stalks away to update the house’s wards, prickling at the feel of another being in his space. Then he goes downstairs himself, dropping over the railing with folded wings, and creeps into the bedroom that used to be his. 

Virgil hasn’t moved. Janus didn’t expect him to. 

He watches the human soul in silence for ages.

*

The angel is in the main loft when Janus returns with food the next morning. There isn’t anything but a rug, but the angel has managed to make himself comfortable; he’s kneeling, hands placid on his thighs and wings curled over his shoulders, and there are tear tracks on his face.

Deja vu steals Janus’s breath. For a moment he’s in an alley behind the tenements, dragging an injured wing and watching a weak candle flame of a soul cower and snarl and _not move,_ cornered by a hungry demon and determined to go down fighting. 

“Deceit?” Patton asks weakly, and the memory dissipates like steam. 

Janus forces his face irritated. “Is there a reason you’re sitting on the floor? I was totally under the impression that Heaven didn’t have beds.” 

“You said you wanted my feathers,” Patton says, even quieter. His wings twitch closer to his back, trembling at the edges. They’re singing with power- every part of the angel is singing with power- and barely grayed at all, still in the earliest stages of degeneration. Taking them off now would give Janus all the strength he needs and much, much more. 

Taking them off before they shed naturally will be agony. 

But the angel is _offering_ -

“Have they even loosened yet?” Janus demands. “Don’t be such a moron.”

Patton sniffles, raising a hand to rub his eyes. He looks like he hasn’t slept. “They have to loosen?”

“Yes, once they’re dying,” Janus sighs. He shouldn’t have to be explaining this. “Then you do as you please- try to keep them and feel everything leech away in increments, or take advantage of conservation of energy and pull them out yourself for a quicker change. We’ll be doing the second.”

“And you’ll let me stay here until then,” Patton pushes. 

“Out of rank self-interest, yes.” Janus lowers himself to the ground in front of Patton, leaving enough space between them for the bundle of food. He wrapped it in his capelet for safekeeping. “Have you ever eaten, angel? Physically eaten?”

“That’s what humans do,” the angel says in bewilderment, leaning forward to stare wide-eyed at the bread and spiked fruit. The food of Hell only sometimes mimics that of Earth: the fruit looks something like dragonfruit or papaya, but the bread is stone black and glistens like the shell of a beetle. Janus stole it, of course. “Is that for me?”

“We’re splitting it,” Janus says, conveniently leaving out the fact that _he_ was only eating part of his half. “Unless it’s too earthly for your holy sensitivities?”

Patton shakes his head, eyes still wide as saucers. When Janus places half of the loaf in his hands, he brings it up to his nose to smell, then takes a quick, surreptitious bite, swallows with a jerk of his head like a bird, and grins. Janus stifles a flinch. “That’s really nice! Thank you, Deceit.”

Janus hands him his half of the fruit, too, taking his own bite to show that it isn’t poison. The tangy sweetness explodes in his mouth, syrupy and thick; Patton makes a face when he takes a bite, but eats it all and licks his fingers, then goes back to the bread. “So is there something else we’re doing after this? Or are we just _loafing_ around until my feathers die?”

“I’d hope that this has at least _bread_ a better understanding between us,” Janus says, because he only has so much strength, and the open look on Patton’s face becomes more real, his eyes more bright. “Which is to say that it should be obvious that I’m a demon, and thus completely uninterested in giving orders to an angel. We don’t function on orders here. _Our_ Lord has his original followers.”

Patton blinks at that. His wings relaxed as they ate, coming out of their defensive position to fluff out and brush the ground, inadvertently coating the primaries in dust; now they ruffle up again, fluttering curiosity. If Janus ever missed his feathers, he certainly doesn’t now; he hadn’t realized they were so expressive. _His_ wings are loose and motionless, thank you very much. “Oh,” Patton says, tilting his head. “But- I thought demons didn’t have children?”

“What do children have to do with anything?” Janus asks, flabbergasted. The sheer _thought_ of it- demonic children, the vulnerability of a well of power without control or protection, the thousand ways to take advantage of it, how easy they would be to make, to _farm,_ if demons had the requisite methods-

“If you’re not following divine or profane orders, you’d have to have children,” Patton says. “That’s what all the humans do! They fall in love and have kiddos and raise them and teach them how to do things and sing to them at night, and then they get to watch them grow up and start families of their own, and learn how to be happy…”

“Until a war or pestilence comes by, I suppose,” Janus says, dangerously close to a snarl. “Or some other human decides to murder them all for land or their own sick _pleasure_.”

Patton’s wings bristle. “Most humans aren’t like that.”

“And you’d know? You’re speaking from a biased sample. You’ve only ever seen the ones who make it, while all the ones who fall down along the way are trodden into the dirt. If most humans were good, Hell wouldn’t see many of them, and yet every day their corpses line the streets. We don’t have _children_ here. We have fresh meat.”

Human souls, laid out on the streets, torn apart for easier consumption or tortured for days on days on _days,_ and _he had been so scared-_

“There’s more food across the hall from your room,” Janus says. “ _Do_ eat as much as you want, I can _definitely_ get more.”

“That means don’t eat so much, right?”

“It means whatever you want it to mean!” Janus snaps. “Words are subjective. They’re units of meaning and I can twist them however I desire. Don’t leave the house.”

Patton admits, “Now I’m really confused.”

“If you leave the house, you will be an easy target,” Janus grits out. That, at least, is true. “So I am telling you not to leave it. If you want to stay here, you have to _stay put_. Is that understood?”

Patton bows his head, wings shifting behind him to a formal cant, rising only halfway from his knees. Janus hates that he recognizes the salute. “It is.”

“Well- _good!”_ Janus spits, and leaves before he can embarrass himself any further. 

He lands on a farther roof and retches, away from any witnesses, trying desperately to push the fate of souls and weaker demons from his mind. 

*

Three days pass before Janus has to make another run for food, and the angel turns out to be nauseously good company. He likes _puns_ , for Sin’s sake. He gets restless when he stays in his borrowed room for too long and flutters around to dust and hang up glittering trinkets he found in one cabinet or another. He uses his failing grace to make meager spirit-lights that dance and throw soft shadows on the walls, drifting down the stairs like moths, clinging to the banister like snowdrifts. 

“It’s nice having somewhere to decorate,” Patton admits when Janus stares at him, aghast. The tone and expression is sheepish. Somehow the fact that the sheepishness isn’t a lie makes everything worse. “And it’s so dark here all the time! I think it’s better if you enjoy the place you live.”

“I barely come here,” Janus says, filling his falsehood quota for the day. “I’m not about to throw a housewarming party for a _bolthole_.”

“Demons have parties?” Patton blurts at that, wings flapping him off the ground with his excitement. The air movement makes one of the lights bob up in the invisible current. 

“Yes, thank you, that’s exactly what I wanted you to take from this conversation-"

“You really should get better curtains, even if you’re not having a party,” Patton says, graciously ignoring Janus completely. “Or at least a lamp. Maybe a few chairs, so we don’t have to sit on the floor all the time. Do you have any downstairs?”

“There’s nothing downstairs,” Janus snaps. “Why would we need a chair?”

“For sitting, silly! I know you don’t _chair_ about these kinds of things, and no one’s _furnished_ you with anything fancy recently, and maybe I don’t have a chair _leg_ to stand on with this kinda talk-”

“Dear Sin.”

“But I really think you should look into brightening this place up a little! I know I won’t be here much longer, but you don’t have to spend all your time brooding in dark corners, do you? You’re a snake, not a chicken.”

Janus keeps staring. In his mind float several comebacks, starting with accusing Patton of being the chicken and ending with a string of reptile-based puns, the best of which is _it’s a matter of scale_ and the worst of which references velociraptors; in between are phrases like _why would you redecorate someone else’s house_ and _where would a demon get beautiful curtains,_ with _what the fucking fuck are you saying to me right now_ peeking up like a dolphin from bewildered waves. An equilibrium is reached.

“I’ll get a chair,” he manages, neatly turning all his incredulity upon his own response. This is what humans must feel when their immune systems get confused and start eating them alive. “Have you eaten today?”

“I haven’t really been hungry,” Patton admits. “Does this place have a kitchen, though? I wanted to try my hand at making soup. Or I guess I should say try my spoon? I feel like I should know all the names of kitchen tools, but I’ll have to study those _ladle_.”

“We don’t have a kitchen,” Janus says, because whatever else this angel is doing, he is _not_ going downstairs. “ _Why_ are you so cheerful this morning?”

“I heard a prayer,” Patton says, nearly beatific, and Janus freezes in mortified confusion. _Prayer._ Does Patton think he’ll still get those, once his grace is gone? Has he been laboring under the belief that this is some temporary embarrassment, bound to blow over like an heir’s embezzlement scandal? That’s an unsustainable train of thought. The sooner he’s shot of that, the better- “So I think it worked. Deceit _,_ I think they might be alive still!”

“Who might be alive?” Janus demands.

“The children,” Patton breathes. His spirit-lights are everywhere, dotting in and out of existence, dipping into his feathers and blotting out in swirls of cold fire. His eyes are as luminous as Neptune. “The ones who were supposed to die by morning. I took them out of the city, and said that they had died before, and when they asked me where the rest of the corpses were, I lied. I said that I was not their keeper. I asked none of the heathens to pray except once, to me, to let me know that they had lived. And one of my kiddos has prayed.”

 _You Fell for that_ _?_ Janus means to ask, but what comes out is, “Could your cohort find them now?”

“I don’t know,” Patton says, some of the light leaving his eyes. “I’m not in Heaven, but their prayers found me. I- I hope that means they prayed to me, not to an angel. I gave them my name.”

Those children are probably being slaughtered as they speak. It will be a mercy once Patton is properly demonic and can’t hear their cries for help.

“I’m sure they’ll be fine.” Janus massages the bridge of his nose. “Do we have food left?”

“Maybe some?” Patton hazards, glancing back at the room. Janus would call it the pantry, except that would imply that it’s filled to the brim; really it’s just the third room with furniture, with food hidden in all the nooks and crannies where an enterprising burglar might not think to look. They had so many break-ins before they learned the ins and outs of warding. “There’s something behind the dresser that I can’t reach too well. I think it might be moving.”

Oh, for the love of- “ _Always_ a good and comforting thing to hear. Stay out of that room for now, won’t you?”

Patton says apologetically, “I can’t tell if you’re being topsy-turvy again.”

“Totally. Anyway, I’m going out for food that remains dead. Try not to destroy anything too completely.”

That salute again. Janus catches himself before he returns it, scowls, and flees before the angel can say anything else. 

*

Janus finds himself by the docks again the next day, farther along the canal where the magma widens into a sulking, red-hot sea. Convection beats heat into his skin like the inside of a furnace. The ships that sail this ocean are manned by higher demons, able to withstand the lava if they fall in. They only dock here for supplies- food, construction materials, weapons- and to glut themselves on whatever souls and weaker demons live in the area. 

Souls are power, after all. They impart strength once consumed, heal wounds, die in satisfying ways. The brightest of them serve for weeks as they’re digested; weaker demons are even brighter, though harder to catch. 

Two ships are docked now. One has been there for weeks, scuttled on obsidian and awaiting repair; the other, larger and rougher than iron, is an unfamiliar black outline against the red sky. Humans take warning, Janus thinks darkly, and keeps to the rooftops and shadows, pulling his glamour around him to hide from view. _You don’t see me, you can’t see me, and even if you could you wouldn’t want to, now, would you? Not if you want an easy hunt. This one isn’t a minor demon at all._

Not quite true. Janus isn’t a minor demon, but he wouldn’t be a difficult hunt, either. Nowadays, his only true advantage is that he kept his wings- or rather, that he’s able to use them. Many of the Fallen never learned. 

Janus drops sharply and silently into the tenements’ tangle of alleyways, cursing Patton for a moron. Then he orients himself, pulls his wings in close enough to hide them, and goes to find a chair.

Even the damned can scrape out existences. The human tenements are a bramble of hole-in-the-wall shops and rundown tents, full of dead people in various states of viciousness, madness, and obsessed regret. Many souls never adjust. Several do, though: digging out lives in their afterlives, finding homes and people to share them with, putting the sins that dragged them down behind them. 

Some are murderers with good cause. Some are suicides, or prone to rage, or spent their lives consumed with envy. A much larger amount is irredeemable.

Janus slips through a door behind a leaning pile of garbage and steps out into a speakeasy. The air smells of liquor and sulfur, hints of steam and smoke drifting near the ceiling; the lighting is necessarily dim, lest it be detectable from outside. 

There are only four human souls in attendance, one of them marked with the glow of a serial con artist. The man’s eyes widen when he sees the wings at Janus’s back, or possibly senses another liar; he raises his glass in a quick salute, downs it, and sidesteps him to dart out the door. The other two are together, huddled in a back corner and glaring distrustfully, poised to run. 

The final human is Logan, who killed a man for plagiarizing his research and framing him for a crime he hadn’t committed. The human glances up sharply at Janus’s approach, then sighs, adjusts his glasses, and steps out from behind the bar. He’s one of the strongest souls Janus knows, bright with intelligence and a pragmatic lack of regret. He is also wrong about most aspects of philosophy, and views lying as a failure of reason. 

This does not actually put them at odds. “Deceit,” Logan says, casting an eye over his clothes and wings. Janus represses a burst of hunger at the light of him. “You don’t seem to be injured, and I don’t recall you drinking in the past. Has something changed?”

Janus flares his wings out in warning, and the human soul glares at him, severe and unwavering. Janus scowls and tucks his wings away. “I _don’t_ need a chair,” he says, because the two souls at the corner of the room have already edged out the door. “And enough food to last a week. I was wondering if you knew where I could find either of those things.”

“If I did, I would not be trapped in this corner of Hell,” Logan says dryly, but he goes behind the counter again to fuss with something underneath. “Is there a reason you need them? Is Virgil-”

“ _No_ ,” Janus snarls. Logan pauses, watching him. “It’s everything to do with that. I have other business, is all.”

Logan nods, tugging at the tie at his neck- why he bothers to wear that thing when it must serve as a convenient handhold in a fight, Janus will never know- and brings out a piece of paper. He scribbles a signature on it, then bites his finger and smears the words with a drop of blood. “Take this to the north side, by the crater. There’s a woman on the fourth floor who’s been hoarding furniture for years. She will observe you before the reverse occurs; if you present this to her, she will treat it as a voucher and allow you to take an item.” The soul stops before Janus can reach for the paper, glowering. “Do _not_ injure or intimidate her in any way.”

“I don’t understand in the least,” Janus promises. Logan gives him the voucher. “I suppose I’ll owe you for this?”

“Naturally,” Logan says primly. Janus moves to leave, and the human clears his throat, biting his lip. “If there should happen to be any developments…”

“You’ll be the last to know,” Janus says, bile rising in his throat, and goes to do his work. 

*

The north side of the borough. Janus follows Logan’s directions and lands outside of a collection of lean-tos made of tarp and sailcloth that stink of tar. They aren’t as close to the docks here, but the smell carries: hot, clean metal and sharp dry stone, mingled with brimstone and steam. The shantytown is ancient, calcified in layers of old and reused shelters, a maze so thick and deep that it’s said to dig into the bedrock below, to wriggle into a collection of tunnels that no demon can breach. 

Janus was down there, once, scared out of his mind and bullying a human soul ahead of him, not abating when he cursed and stumbled, dragging him forward and snarling at him to _stay awake, stay aware, don’t you dare give up-_

Don’t think of it.

The tunnels are just as filthy and claustrophobic as they say, but the shantytown grew vertically over time, too; it climbs the tenement walls like ivy, clinging with the help of tar and animal glues. There isn’t an entrance anymore, only a protective layer of filth and cloth. Most demons, preferring an easy meal, never bother trying for entry.

Janus closes his eyes and feels for hidden things, secret things, lies that said _there’s nothing here, move along_ like Janus did when he went out, and barely throws himself to the side before a larger, wilder presence crashed into the ground behind him. 

Scrambling under a tarp, wings closed around him like burlap- Janus pulls a shroud of unimportance around him, tucking in small like a weak soul, hardly worth pursuing, and hears someone scream. He can see through a gap in the fabric. There’s no evidence of his existence from inside the tent, no bulge to hide a demon form. He’s safe.

Two greater demons are standing in the alleyway, and one of them just ripped off a human’s head. A strip of the man’s shirt winks into view, stained ruby with paint under the blood: he was something more than a murderer, then. Someone irredeemable, who couldn’t function in a group or stay near anyone without hurting them worse than was tolerable. Someone violently asocial, sadistic and uncontrolled like a rabid dog. Those souls are always driven from the tenements eventually. Without shelter, they’re the first to be devoured.

The smaller demon is taller than an elephant, tusked like one with shriveled gray wings at his back. The taller is leonine, black-eyed, with skin cracked like dry earth. Janus doesn’t see wings on her back; most likely she tore them off, tired of the useless extra handhold. If Janus is found, he’ll be free if he reaches the air- if the taller demon can’t leap as far as he thinks. 

The lioness bites into the soul’s spurting neck, and the same person screams again, scrambling against a wall. They’re dark-eyed, dark-haired, slight and pale with black clothing- Janus chokes on false recognition, wings rising like if he runs fast enough he can take them and flee- and accompanied by a man with faded gold wings and a soft disposition, a man who still has his feathers. 

Angel. Janus stills. 

The fallen angel has his hands on a woman’s shoulders, wings raised to shelter her body. His face is bleached pale, feathers shivering like in a strong wind; the soul behind him is breathing fast, clearly in the throes of a panic attack, and the one at his feet is bleeding out from a mess at her gut. 

No one else around, to witness this scene that happens a thousand times a day, in a thousand places, in every corner of Hell. No one to help, and Virgil would have, but Virgil is- Janus can’t risk it when there is _no one else-_

“Oh, _shit_ , an angel,” the smaller demon gushes, hot with violence. “Don’t see those every day. You remember when we saw those every day, Tal? You recall that?”

“We feasted well,” the lioness agrees, rising to her full height. The murderer’s corpse falls from her claw with a squelch. “Satiating, to pluck the flesh from their wings.”

 _"Very_ nice,” the tusked demon hisses, and lashes out with a barbed tail. 

The pale soul cries out too late; the tail snags on the angel’s guarding wing, yanks him forward. The angel screams and writhes back, beating helplessly with his other wing, and chokes, “Elliott, please, I need you to run!”

When he’s in range, the angel lunges forward, pulling his wing free. Dust hits Janus’s face from where his foot hits the dirt. The smaller soul hesitates in the alleyway- the woman coughs up blood- the angel stumbles, looking back, injured wing dragging him down-

The lioness grabs the back of his neck, lifting him into the air, and yanks a claw down his secondary feathers. 

Involuntary horror closes Janus’s throat. The angel wails, legs seizing as he instinctively tries to curl into his weak points, and the demon reaches lower to pluck out his flight feathers, crush the hollow delicate points, rend the flesh beneath to muscle. The smaller demon looks up from the woman’s jerking body, jaws dripping with blood and soulstuff, and scrambles close to stuff the fallen feathers into his mouth. 

The keen the angel makes at that, the devouring of his essence, the tearing of what little is _left of him-_

The soul at the alleyway screams, _“Emile!”_ and charges forward, no weapons but their fists, soaked with tears and white-eyed terror and utterly doomed, and Janus throws out an aura so strong it makes everyone freeze, suddenly convinced that what they’re doing is pointless and they’re staring at nothing. 

Janus breathes the lie, thinks it, rolls it up to braid through his ribcage like a hidden map. Elliott stops in place, eyes going blank; the tusked demon shivers, glancing around suspiciously, as the lioness draws back with a growl; and the angel hits the ground with a pained sob, curling into himself like it can protect his wings at all. 

It’s unsustainable. The lioness turns towards Janus’s bolthole as soon as he casts the spell, nostrils flaring, and he doesn’t have space to run. There isn’t an entrance to the tunnels so close to the surface. If he moves he’ll upset the tarp or get tangled, and the lioness will eat him alive. All he can do is fill his mouth with venom.

Janus doesn’t eat what other demons do, not anymore. He doesn’t only supplement his diet with human food, he lives off it. He isn’t strong enough to pull energy from magma or his own implacable will, isn’t one of the favored Fallen who get any soul they want delivered to their feet. He hasn’t killed a human soul since _before,_ when he thought of nothing but himself and wove webs of deception through all the borough. Since before he blunted his fangs, before he became a starveling shadow of his former self. Before he was tamed.

The lioness is at the edge of his hiding place, vague and faltering. Her eyes grow sharper by the minute, fangs glistening with blood. She’s close. Janus can smell the carnage on her breath. 

Behind her, the human is still frozen. The smaller demon's wrestling the angel onto his belly, pinning his wings flat, fisting hands in his dying feathers. Janus can hear his choked sobs from here. He’s going to die hearing them, knowing that he could have helped more if he had less to lose. 

_I'm sorry,_ he begs no one, because no one's left. _I'm sorry, you'll starve and I'll be gone, I'm so sorry-_

A swell of light, cold and vicious; Janus thinks it’s the lioness readying a spell of her own, jerks back and snarls, but the demon roars in pain instead, on her knees all of a sudden with a gushing stump for an arm. Her companion leaps to his feet, knocking the human to the ground- he doesn’t even seem to notice- and wheels around, booming low in his chest.

Janus can’t even see what cuts him down. One minute there’s a demon standing in the alleyway, and the next there’s a head rolling from that demon’s shoulders, hitting the ground at the same time the body’s knees crumple. Like rubble sloughing off the side of a mountain. A slow, inexorable fall, with an avalanche of blood behind it. 

The lioness lunges, and the new player becomes clear: brighter than Janus has ever seen, than anything in Hell, wings lit red and gold and so strong the feathers smear to streaks in Janus’s vision. The demon staggers, lashes out with all three remaining claws, blinds herself with bloodlust-- and the being takes the blows and ignores them, lets her get close and slices her diagonally shoulder to gut, so the pieces of her slide apart and down. 

A quick, measured move. The being’s wings are crested behind it, hotter than the Sun, a clean heat that’s nothing like magma at all. Its blade gleams like liquid mercury. 

The angel watches the corpse for a second like it thinks it will move, like it doesn’t think it’s _dead enough._ Then it crouches beside Emile, murmuring in a soft voice, and helps him to his feet. The fallen angel scrambles for the feathers on the ground, tucking them into his chest and shivering miserably as they melt into his skin; already he feels a little different, the scales tipping ever so slightly towards the inevitable outcome. 

“-isn’t so wrong,” Janus catches, strung so tight he can barely think past the readiness to run or fight or anything, “not when- are you-”

“No need to worry about me,” Emile says, the slightest bit louder, and manages to stand on his own two feet. The angel nods, turns to the human- and stiffens, frowning, touching the human’s forehead to clear their eyes. Elliott blinks rapidly, then gives a low, terrified moan and rushes to Emile, pressing their face into his shoulder.

The angel mutters, “What the...?” His brow furrows. He looks to the shanties where Janus is hiding.

With a horrible twist in his chest, Janus _recognizes_ him. A fallen angel, usually dimmer, who’s been around for as long as the largest hovel has, who Janus always thought was unusually bright, bold, long-lasting- and of course he was, because he _isn’t Fallen._

Janus thought the aura of lies was from the constant, performative confidence. Janus is a moron who deserves to die for this and is probably about to. 

No wonder that damn place hasn’t ever been raided, has even managed to expand. No wonder there are more fallen angels who don’t let themselves become demons, or who survive long enough to become them. Someone protects them.

Someone who never liked either of them much. 

Roman’s expression goes cold when he sets eyes on Janus’s hiding place, cheeks flushing with rage. He’s flamboyant, always has been; when Janus and Virgil went to the hovels for information or to pass on supplies, back when Virgil wanted to protect everyone and Janus followed helplessly in his wake, he would rant and insult and even help, sometimes, after a round or two of increasingly juvenile argument. He called Virgil _Stormy Night, Sam Shade, Edgar Allen Woe._ He called Janus _Villain_ when he saw him, _Snake Eyes_ when he felt generous, _Deceiver_ when he very much didn’t. 

He never drew his sword in Virgil’s presence, but he’s drawn it now. “I should have known you would be involved in this,” he spits, wings high behind him. They’re dimming now, back to the burnished red and gold that so many mistake for faded remnants of a richer color. He’s dressed all in white. The demon blood burned right off him. “Come out,” Roman continues, low, “or I’ll tear you apart while you cower, instead. Let’s see you try to lie your way out of this one.”

Terror beats in Janus’s chest like a trapped bat. He plasters on a neutral smirk, thinking _showtime,_ and creeps out with his wings folded tight along his spine. He can’t bring himself to spread them into easier targets. “I love this story you’re telling yourself where I somehow coordinated this whole attack,” he snaps, all too aware of the fallen angel’s widened eyes, the human’s automatic flinch into their companion’s side. Roman draws back, shoulders stiff and straight, smearing demon blood under his feet. “Don’t you know what hiding looks like?”

“I came here because I felt Emile _bewitched,”_ Roman says, dark. “Neither of these beasts has that capability.”

“And you know that _how,_ exactly?” Janus hisses, wishing desperately for a distraction. “I don’t have any reason to help a greater demon. You’re looking for motive where none exists.”

“You’ll excuse me for thinking a demon might prefer to follow its savage nature,” Roman snarls, “especially when it’s been _depriving_ itself for so long. Did you finally tire of the act? Was that it, serpent?”

The world goes cold. The fallen angel has the human bundled behind him, shielding them with his wings like he thinks Janus is about to attack. Ash drifts down between them, heavy with the acrid smell of smoke. And Janus is so _fucking_ hungry.

“You understand everything you’re talking about,” he says, trembling with rage. His wings are out, flared and pointed, dull in the heavy red light of the molten rock. His fangs are bared. 

Roman draws himself up, glaring, something almost cautious in the way he regards Janus, in how he lowers his sword. “You didn’t help,” he says, quiet and damning. “Two dead, an innocent hurt, and you didn’t bother with anything but yourself. Am I meant to think any part of you’s changed, Deceit? Am I meant to believe you ever did?”

“Take your charity cases home, angel,” Janus spits, burning, _burning_ with the need to say something in his own defense, to point out all the ways he’s trying and how much Roman doesn’t know about what happened. To lie. “You wouldn’t want me getting peckish and changing my mind, would you? Just think of all the rhetorical questions you would never get to throw in my general direction then.”

“I’ll be back as soon as they’re safe,” Roman threatens, shining with grace. “If you’re still here by then-”

“Fuck off,” Janus snarls, but it doesn’t stop him from flinching when Roman glares fire, nor from ducking back when he leaves in a blur of light and takes the others with him. 

He gets the message, anyway. 

*

Janus lugs the chair back into his manor with an admirable lack of thuds and crashes, and finds Patton dead asleep on the floor. The angel’s wings flop behind him like a trailing gown, once-white feathers gone the color of old bone, a sickly grayish-yellow. He has his head cradled in his arms, nose snuffling into the crook of his elbow. 

The other angel wailed, when the demon tore his feathers. He cried and struggled and didn’t even beg, because he knew no demon would listen. He made those wounded, breaking sounds, and when the tusked demon ate his power it was like the last of him was dragged out with it, something raw and sacred clawed out to the light.

Something claws at Janus now. He takes a pillow from Patton’s temporary room and tucks it beneath his head, not touching him more than absolutely necessary. Then he steps away, trembling like he didn’t escape Roman at all, and goes downstairs.

The manor looks like it was once inhabited, down there. There are pillows strewn around the living room. The kitchen has a sparse collection of plates, one bowl, and three spoons. A closet in the hall is filled to the brim with knickknacks and possible trade goods, and another holds every spare weapon they could get their hands on. There are weapons hidden around the house, too, in case of an intrusion. Someone left an open book across the arm of a chair.

Dust covers every inch. Demons don’t have any urge to make things livable, not like humans do. Janus has been in other manors, and they’re clean and untouched when the demon wants to seem urbane, abattoirs of blood and torture implements when they want to be fierce. Some function as fighting pits, or casinos, or dungeons. Some are abandoned entirely but for when the demon sleeps. 

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Janus’s mansion used to be untouched, too. 

He pulls the remnants of his last meal- exactly half, always half- from a kitchen cabinet and slips into his old bedroom. The shape beneath the covers is motionless, like it’s been for over a year now. 

This close, he can trace how Virgil’s bangs fall over his eyelids. 

“Get up,” Janus whispers, vicious, close to tears. “Up, you coward, you sniveling _moron,_ don’t you want to panic about things yourself? It’s practically the only use for you. I don’t care if you never do anything else.”

On his knees by the bed, like prayer. Janus sucks in a sobbing breath, silent as the grave he never had, as Virgil’s grave never tended. He feels the tears trace his scales, the plain humanish skin, corner the side of his jaw. Dark spots bloom on the covers under his hands. 

Demons don’t cry, either. _Oh, Virgil, what have you done to me?_

“Please,” Janus whispers to the only reason he’s ever had to beg. “Please, Virgil. It’s been a year. It’s not such a bad wound, if you think about it. She didn’t take all of you. There’s enough left to grow back from if you try hard enough, I’m absolutely certain of it. I’ve never been more certain in my life.”

 _Please, Virgil, I don’t want to do it. I’m Deceit, and I don’t want to do it. What have you_ done _to me?_

Souls, like demons, breathe only out of habit. Virgil’s chest isn’t moving. His body is thin and silent in the king-sized bed, face wiped free of the black makeup he so adores. His skin is paler than the surface of the moon.

Janus tears the bread into tiny pieces and feeds them into Virgil’s mouth, stroking his throat so he reflexively swallows. The same for the fruit, pieces so small no one could choke, though he watches carefully in case he does. The water he freezes into cubes, meager power pouring into the errand, to let them melt on Virgil’s tongue. 

The human is like a doll in his hands. The wounds on his chest and neck are healed, only faint scars, but the wounds were only the method of transfer. The demon who took him wanted to bleed him slow, to drink him by increments. Janus was too late to stop her.

“I saw Roman today,” he murmurs. “And Logan still lives, or at least exists, considering. The hovels have grown quite a bit, but there’s a new ship docked that seems to have brought half a host of hungry greaters to our doorstep.”

No response. The human’s skin is so cold. Janus puts a hand on his cheek, thinking to warm it, but he isn’t hot enough to make a difference. Virgil’s skin devours it like a black hole eating light.

Janus can’t bring himself to speak any further. He lays beside Virgil and stretches his wing over the prone figure, imagining that Virgil is cussing him out beneath it, telling him to get off of him before he kicks him somewhere unpleasant, what the hell is he doing, does Janus _think_ he’s some kind of wimp? 

He wishes Virgil would wake up and attack him. Wake up and scream at him for being a moron or a creep, wake up and drive him from his home, wake up and gut him and drink every drop of his blood. Just do _something_ to show that there’s anything left.

Hasn’t it been long enough? Shouldn’t Virgil have faded completely by now? Shouldn’t he have come back?

Sin, _please-_

“Deceit?” someone asks, a shaded body in the doorway, winged and unfamiliar and an _intruder, how dare they, how_ **_dare-_ **

_“Get out!”_ Janus screams. _“Get out, get_ **_out_ ** _, I’ll_ **_kill_ ** _you-”_

The intruder huffs out a winded breath when he hits, tries to twist away and get some distance. Janus can’t let it. He grabs it by the shoulders- angel, an _angel-_ and claws it with his wings, scoring a bloody line across its cheek. 

“Stop, stop, Deceit, it’s-”

“Don’t _touch him!”_

The angel throws itself back, beating its wings, and Janus rushes back to the doorway to flare his wings before it, snarl building hot in his throat. The intruder doesn’t return. Virgil stays in bed, unmoving, unbreathing, not injured at all.

They stay that way for a long time.

*

Janus finds Patton in the loft after, holding a cloth to his bleeding face. The angel pauses when he approaches, nearly a flinch, and asks, “Who do you have sleeping in that room?”

His face is open and worried. Janus’s hands work helplessly at his sides, guilt eating at his stomach. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t realize it was you.”

“I’m sorry I went downstairs,” Patton murmurs, a paltry, unnecessary apology. He comes to Janus and falls to his knees, and Janus sinks down beside him. “That’s a human, isn’t it? They look so small.” Patton’s wings are grayed and downy at his back. He takes the cloth from his face and puts it by his legs. His cut wells up, blood seeping slow and careful down his cheek, beneath his tear-damp eyes. “Are they your friend?”

“He’s.” The words stick in Janus’s mouth. His wings cling tight and quiet to his back. “It’s my fault he’s like this. He won’t wake up.”

In the meager light from the window, the bare red slivers that slip through the curtains, Patton’s face looks like that of a martyr. “I’m sorry,” he says, no hint of a lie. “That sounds horrible. Is that why you need my feathers?”

If only. “I need them to protect him,” Janus whispers. “I don’t eat anymore. I’ve used myself up, expended everything, and I can’t-” Can’t bring himself to hunt souls, can’t muster the power to kill a demon for its strength- “I can’t stop anyone coming in, once the wards fail.”

And Virgil made so many enemies, once he got up the nerve, once Janus started following him like an indentured servant or a slave-

“What are you going to do with them?” Patton asks, soft and trusting. “Will it hurt?”

“No,” Janus says, even. Emile screamed. “No, Patton, it won’t hurt at all.” He swallows. “Are you sure you’re ready? We could wait longer, if you want.”

Patton shakes his head. “You’ve been so nice to me,” he says, and thankfully doesn’t hug him. Janus doesn’t know if he could stand Patton hugging him. “And you helped me know about becoming a demon. Of course I want to help you back. I even know what I want to be called!”

A vise crushes Janus’s lungs to pulp. “Is that so?” he asks thinly, and Patton grins. 

“I’ll tell you after we’re done,” he promises, darting in to hug Janus before he can flee. Then he’s up on his feet, moving over to the chair and saying, “Is it okay if I sit here while we do it? My wings are really itchy.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me of that,” Janus manages, making a face. “I _definitely_ miss the endless preening. I always felt like I was seconds away from contracting some kind of mite.”

Patton giggles. He flutters a little, shaking a few downy feathers loose to drift, and Janus can’t stop himself from adding, “May I- see your face, first?” 

A flicker of apprehension, but Patton steps forward, lets Janus cup his jaw with gloved, careful fingers. He has nothing of himself to spare, but soon he’ll have all he needs and more; he can give this little, back. He can blunt the edges of this unspeakable cruelty. “Hold still,” Janus says, gentle as with Virgil in a panic attack, _gentler,_ and brushes his thumb across the wound. Patton shivers, leaning into his touch, and Janus pushes the cut to close, smooths it over with his fingers. 

“Oh,” Patton breathes. “That feels better.” He brings up a hand to his face, pale eyes wide with wonder. 

When he goes to the chair, putting his arms over the back and resting his chin on his hands, Janus bites the inside of his cheek until it bleeds. Patton’s wings hang behind him, tips brushing the floor. There isn’t dust on it anymore. Patton swept it clean.

A few spirit-lights blink around them, floating into corners, but they fade as Janus watches. 

“Try to relax,” Janus says. “If you feel pain, let me know, won’t you? This isn’t so urgent that I want to hurt you.”

Patton nods, peering over his shoulder. “They really do feel weird,” he admits. “But I don’t- Deceit, am I gonna be able to fly after this?”

“You should,” Janus says, and the inkling of truth makes his shoulders relax. “I was able, though it took some time to relearn. If you give up on the possibility, your wings will change so that you can’t, but if you’re sure you can-”

“I’d like to fly,” Patton says. “You flap so much, though, like a little bat! Except big, because I hope it’s not a _stretch_ to say, but your wings can spread really wide.”

“I see you’re letting your wit soar,” Janus drawls. He puts out a cautious hand, and Patton pushes his wings into his grip, shuddering at the contact. “Angel?”

“I’m fine,” Patton says threadily. “Just strange. Take them _out_ , please. I can’t- it feels too strange.”

Janus takes a breath and puts a hand in Patton’s feathers, running his fingers through as gently as he can. “It’s all right,” he says at Patton’s hitched, muffled sob. This part would have happened either way. “We’re demons. It’s best not to long for things we can’t keep.”

Some of the secondaries come loose with his hand, leaving a patch of open skin. A few melt back into Patton’s spine, smoothing the bald spot into soft, fuzzy silver. Janus lets the rest fall to the floor. “Are you sure I’ll be able to fly?” Patton whimpers, wings seizing and twitching. He so obviously wants to pull away. Janus plucks a primary, making the angel flinch, and he babbles, “It’s just, without my feathers-”

“You’re already smoothing out,” Janus promises, and holds the primary to Patton’s skin so he can absorb it. This much he can allow. He doesn’t need everything. “Your wings will be more like those of a bat, from what I can see. They’re becoming a lovely pale gray.”

The angel sniffles. Janus runs a hand along his back and he arches into it, more feathers shaking loose. He’s relaxed enough that it doesn’t seem to hurt, not like the other angel’s did; he trusts Janus enough not to struggle. _Sin_ , if only he’d struggle, beat Janus to bits and get _away-_

“Really?” 

“Really,” Janus promises. “They’ll be beautiful. You may have to flap more often than you glide, but that isn’t unusual. Once you reach the thermals above the city, they’ll take your weight. Pandaemonium has a surplus of hot air.”

“Pandaemonium,” Patton repeats. “That’s Hell, right? The name of the city?”

“Where Lucifer fell,” Janus confirms, and the memory tugs at him like a barb, quietens his voice. “Where he swore that we would wage eternal war, irreconcilable, to our grand foe. By force or guile, he said, and we all swore to follow him.”

“You were there?” Patton turns around, narrowly avoiding smacking Janus in the face with an alula. His face holds no betrayal, only deep curiosity and concern. “But, didn’t you say-”

“I changed, after Virgil,” Janus admits, cutting him off. Saying his name aloud feels like blasphemy. “He fought in a revolution, fled the battlefield a deserter and was hanged for it. He died begging.”

Patton says, voice strangled, “Oh.”

“I tried to eat him,” Janus whispers. “He didn’t run that time. He hid me from my enemies. I was so strong then, fled from a coup in the center capital, and he never thought for a moment to trade me for life.” Absurdly, he feels like crying. “I haven’t eaten anything filling for one hundred and fifty years, and it has weakened me, but once I tore humanity from Paradise.”

“You’re the Serpent,” Patton says, soft and revelatory. “The tempter.” A silence. “Do you love _him?”_

“How would I know?” Janus spits. “I have so many frames of reference.”

“I think you do,” Patton says, softer, and lets Janus pull the rest of the feathers from his wings, lets him pile them on the floor. The silence builds into a monolith, a weight between them like the world. 

At last, Patton spreads his wings and there are no feathers left at all. His wings are those of a bat, delicate tines tapering into fingers, woven between by translucent silver skin. His eyes stayed the same Neptunian blue. 

The feathers at his feet, pale and dusty gray, waver in the displaced air. Patton folds and unfolds his new wings, then flaps them twice, accustoming himself to the joints and corners. His ears are the slightest bit sharper. 

“I was meant to bring plague,” he says. “Another flu, like the one that killed so many not long ago. And I did, because I had to, but I spared too many. I told them I was sparing them, when war overtook the city. I got them out.”

“There’s _everything_ wrong with that.”

A sad smile. “Michael thought so. But I know who I am, I think, so I don’t regret any of it.” And then, so quiet it’s almost muffled by the hiss of the docks, “If you’re Deceit, I think I’m Morality.” 

Janus’s mouth feels dry. “It’s a good name.”

“Thanks.” Patton tilts his head, not even glancing at the feathers by his feet. “Do you want me to leave now, or…?”

“You _shouldn’t_ stay a few more days,” Janus croaks. “I’ve already gotten this exquisite chair, and even some bread. We’re in the height of luxury. I’d hate to send you into the wider realm unprepared.”

Never mind that he’ll know as soon as he leaves and feels his feathers’ strength abandon him. Never mind that not absorbing them will leave him weak as a newborn lamb, able to run but never to fight. Patton is going to hate him. 

Morality nods, then glances up at Janus, almost shyly, and rushes to plant a kiss on his forehead. Janus freezes. “Thank you,” he whispers. “I thought- I thought Falling would be the worst thing that ever happened to me. I was just gonna sit there forever until someone came to kill me, I- I couldn’t imagine anything _good_. I didn’t think anyone good could live in Hell.”

“Go to bed, Morality,” Janus forces out, wanting to hide or weep or see Virgil rounding the corner, leaning against the doorframe, glowering at them both. “I’ll teach you to fly tomorrow.”

Patton leaves. Janus stoops to gather his feathers once he’s gone, scooping them into his cape to bundle into Virgil’s room later, hissing through his teeth at the coldsharp pain of their newly saturated touch. So much of Patton is in these feathers, now that he’s shed them. So much of Patton is being stolen. 

It doesn’t matter. Before Virgil, Janus never knew doubt. He can’t afford to feel it now.

*

The next day, Janus leaves early, and finds himself transporting supplies across the borough. Two of Logan’s people were bold enough to trick their way _onto_ the new ship, a move that in Janus’s opinion took not only brass balls but lead brains, and they came out with goods that Janus hasn’t seen in centuries. Janus doesn’t ask, only takes the bundle and nods at Logan, content to return the favor before it blows up into something he can’t repay.

The flight takes two hours. He has to wind his way above the city, across bulging lopsided mansions and obsidian cathedrals, thick arterial boulevards and alleyways choked with demons lying in wait. He witnesses two deaths, four muggings, and what looks like a marriage, and flies straight into the smoke of a slaughtered bonfire to choke on the scent of burning flesh. 

Shouts and screams drift up to him. One human waves at him, leaning so far over a rooftop that she nearly plummets to her death. He sees only one other winged demon, a small woman with buzzing fly’s wings, and she darts to hide as he passes overhead, shrouding herself in so much secrecy that no one but Deceit would ever have known she was there.

The skies are seeping pitch by the time he arrives, harbingers of a hellstorm approaching over the molten ocean. Janus dives to escape the approaching gusts- he does _not_ want to be caught so high up by acid rain- and hands his cargo to the first human who shows him Logan’s signature.

The way back is a race against the elements, but he can’t afford to wait out the storm. Patton might go out in it, not realizing the danger. Janus takes to the skies again, stomach twisting at how the clouds turn the sky such a dark umber, how they scorch the air pungent with their deadly makeup. 

Virgil was caught in acid rain, once. Janus spent half a day healing him, growing skin back layer by layer, shushing his tortured sobs. 

The wind picks up as he heads west, threatening to toss him out over the magma. Janus fights the air currents, careens off course, is thrown ass over teakettle to flap wildly until he rights himself. Finally he has to concede and drop altitude, though it puts him in range of weaponry from the ground. The first stinging drizzle is already landing on his skin.

A rooftop. He stumbles into a puddle, cursing at the acid eating through his boots, and pulls his cloak over his wings to shield them. The cover won’t last long; the sky has clouded over dark as a duststorm, filling the air with flechettes that pit the skin as easily as rock. Fabric is nothing to Hell’s rain. 

Thunder crashes above him. Janus hisses at the sky, sick and enraged, and turns to find a place to hop off the roof-

But the thunder crashes again, closer this time, accompanied by a hot furious _brightness,_ and Janus finds himself facing a true angel instead.

Time stops. Roman’s wings are incandescent, his sword a slash of steel in the dusky grayness; the acid hits him and boils off like steam, searing Janus’s nose and mouth as he breathes. Terror hits as a tsunami- something happened to Virgil Logan Patton Janus did something _else_ unforgivable _what is it--_

“Roman,” he starts, and hits the ground with a sickening crack, wing snapping under him like a misfolded umbrella. Pain shrieks through his nerves, sharp and immediate, and he scrambles upright as the next blow rains down, catches it across the scales of his face. He _feels_ one of them tear away.

Upright again, blindsided, almost too startled to snarl. Roman has his collar in a burning grip, wing hanging useless at his side, holy sword blistering his throat. “How dare you. How fucking dare you, _Deceit_ , you crawling Serpent, you bastard _liar,_ I thought you at least respected his _memory!”_

The words jangle through Janus’s mind, refuse to settle. His memory, Roman thinks he- Virgil’s _memory--_

“What are you _talking_ about?” Janus demands, acid cutting into the delicate edges of his wings. His eyes feel thick with agonized tears. The blade cuts into his throat like a red-hot knife. 

“He’s dead,” Roman snarls. “He’s fucking dead, we all know it, the witch devoured him and you _let_ her and now you have the nerve to pretend you’re good? To trick your way back into power?” Cold fear runs down Janus’s spine. No, please, he _can’t_ have- “Well, I wasn’t fooled. I’m only glad I got to you before you went after the _nerd-_ before you ate that poor angel who thought you were his _friend.”_

“You told him,” Janus says, blank with horror. “You- you _told-”_

“I should _quarter_ you,” Roman says, pushing the blade against his throat, but Janus can’t do much more than whimper at the pain. He told him. He told Patton that Janus was tricking him, making him weaker, and Patton knows where Virgil is. He told Patton, and angels abhor a coward, abhor a deserter, a damned soul- he told Patton and Patton’s feathers are _in Virgil’s room-_

“I wasn’t going to kill him,” Janus snaps. “I was never, I just- I had to-”

The blade presses further into his throat, cutting off his speech. The holiness scorches his skin pink, red, darker, and his wing is a throbbing agony. The other one is pressed close to his back like that will keep it from the angel’s notice, save it from the acid’s hunger. “I should kill you right now,” Roman says, sounding almost choked. “I should. Emile told me- I thought you might be _good._ I thought it might all have been true.”

“So sorry to disappoint,” Janus manages to sneer, interrupts it with a pained gasp when Roman tightens his grip. 

“I hope your new friend rips you limb from limb,” Roman spits. His grip loosens, ever so slightly. “If you survive long enough for him to find you, give him my regards.”

He lets go. Janus hits the edge of the roof and falls.

*

Unconsciousness abandons him once his face starts to burn. Janus chokes back a scream at the acid brushing his skin and scrabbles free of the puddle, dragging his crumpled wing behind him into the shallow doorstep. There’s a human corpse in the street, close enough that he could reach it if he were fast enough. The man’s face is pitted down to the skull. 

Not much left, but if he were fast enough- if he can get any advantage, anything to keep the angel from tearing Virgil’s comatose body to shreds-

No. Janus pulls himself upright, wheezing through the burn cutting into his throat, and gathers his wing to his spine, ties it with what’s left of his cloak. The motion makes him sob, white agony tearing through him like lightning. He can’t stay until the rain ends. He has to get home. 

The shantytown tunnels are said to lead everywhere in the borough, but Janus has never found another entrance. He’s never looked as hard as he is now, either, all the filed-down parts of him brought out to burn away. 

Too long, scrambling. He has to run through open downpours, muffling screams at the acid touch, to follow the faint trails of _hiddenness_ glinting in his periphery- but he finds their source. Beneath a pile of bones and refuse is another bolthole, connected to a warren of them, a pathway out of the rain. Janus falls into it with a cry of relief. 

Home is where his wards are strongest. Janus follows it like a wavering compass, staggering past huddled shapes and ignoring anyone who runs, stumbling down lopsided stairs and up inclines and through twisting, secretive passageways, squeezing his wings through cramped tunnels and half-flapping desperately through big spaces, unable to make his hands grip the rungs of ladders. 

No part of him isn’t bleeding. He can’t stop moving, can’t let his momentum peter out. He won’t get up again if he does, and the drumbeat keeps him moving like a marching soldier, beats out _Virgil Virgil Virgil_ so it subsumes all thought. Pain is nothing compared to what he’ll feel if he returns to find Virgil’s dismembered corpse. Pain is a dream compared to that. 

The surface, the tenements he knows best. This exit is so close to Logan’s speakeasy that Janus wants to scream, for having missed it for so long. Acid is puddled in the streets, streaming rivulets down the near-flattened gutters; Janus has to jump over it to reach his own street, to scramble up the side of his house, to drop through the hole in the roof that passes for his door. 

The impact hurts. Janus gasps back his cry but can’t make himself move, lays there trembling for longer than he can afford. 

The rug is bloodstained now. Patton did all that cleaning for nothing. 

On his feet. Janus jumps the stair rail halfway down, and the jolt travels all the way to the break, blacking out his vision. Ridiculous, pointless, _irrelevant._ Virgil’s door is open and there’s a shape inside and _no, no,_ **_please-_ **

He makes a sound. He _must_ make a sound, because Patton is in the doorway, gleaming silver like the blade of a guillotine and _singing_ with power, as much as Janus had in the beginning, before he knew what it was like to value someone more than himself. 

Patton’s hands are on his shoulders. Janus lunges, gets his teeth in the demon’s collarbone, and they fall back, their owner saying something, white noise. 

Through the doorway. Janus feels for the body on the bed, cool and untouched and _there,_ alive, not torn apart or faded to nothing, and drags him down to cover with every part of him. His good wing wraps over them both, the rest of Virgil slack in Janus’s arms. 

Patton is going to eat him. Patton is going to make Janus _watch_ like before he had to watch and there’s _nothing he can do about it._ He lied. He was caught. Even if Virgil isn’t killed now, he’ll starve before much time has passed. Janus has been giving everything just to keep him around, and now there’s nothing left. He can’t defend him.

Closer. Patton- _Morality_ is standing in front of them, wings spread, hands working at his sides. His body is stiff, frozen.

Janus breaks. “Leave him,” he blurts, and the words come from so far away. “Please, please, just leave him, it isn’t his fault, it never was, he’s only _human,_ eat me alive and I won’t fight but please, _don’t touch him.”_

“Deceit-”

“I tempted him but he never fell,” Janus begs, “he never listened, he just kept going and I followed him and even _I_ didn’t know why, please, there’s no reason to touch him, I’m the one who _lied-”_

The demon moves forward, and Janus screams and throws himself at him, snarling with all he has left. No venom left, and it hadn’t even _affected_ him, but- but Janus has nothing else. He bowls the demon over, but Patton shunts him aside, holds him down, releases a burst of power so massive that it makes Janus wail even as it gives him a hint of strength because it _wasn’t directed at him._ It was- Virgil, at Virgil, Virgil’s _gone-_

Patton speaks, but Janus can’t understand what he’s saying. His existence was narrowed to a point, a single focus, and that candle flame was smothered before it had another chance to grow. He can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t look at the ground in case he sees blood that isn’t his. Patton did something to Virgil, because Janus attacked him. 

“Deceit,” Morality says, but Janus doesn’t raise his head, just stares at the ground and waits to be devoured. He would pray for it, if they weren’t in Hell. It hurts so much just moving, and if he has to see what’s left of his best friend laid down across from him- “Deceit, _please_ , will you please look at me?” Frantic. Panicked. Janus can’t parse out why. “Sweetheart, I promise it’s okay, you don’t have to be scared-”

“What the _fuck_ is going on,” someone says, and Janus doesn’t know what sound he makes at _that,_ either, but at the next moment there’s someone between them, bristling and dark and full to the brim with confused hostility, so familiar that Janus knows he’s dreaming. 

Perhaps this is what happens to demons when they die. Perhaps they see mirages, pretty lies to keep them from fighting, perhaps that’s Morality’s especial skill. 

“Oh,” Patton’s saying in relief, “Oh, good, can you-”

“Don’t touch him!” Virgil snaps. A hand touches Janus’s half-flayed wrist, darts over his torn-up face and the makeshift sling holding his broken wing. “Who _are_ you? Did you do this to him?”

Janus shakes his head at that, trying to stand if only to see whether Patton pushes him back down. Virgil- not Virgil, but he doesn’t feel like a lie, feels like nothing so much as himself- shoves him down instead, snarling, “Do _not_ move, did you fly through a _hellstorm?_ What happened to your wing? Why are you just- on the floor, Dee, seriously-”

Patton shifts closer, and Janus can’t help it, even with a hallucination; he hisses, desperate and guttural, and shoves Virgil behind him, spreading his remaining wing to hide him from sight. He has to. There’s nothing else, no one to live for, he _has to-_

“Wait, shit, are you- if you’re a threat, I will literally rip your throat out with my teeth, okay, don’t think I won’t,” Virgil hisses, in front of Janus again where it isn’t safe. He’s crouched by his side before Janus can snap at him, though, cupping a warm hand over the back of his head and saying something else to Patton, who isn’t moving anymore. “Dee? Dee, can you look at me? Fuck, okay, I- this is literally Hell and you’re not my father, I can cuss all I want- Dee, I need you to breathe with me. Can you do that for me?”

“You’re gone,” Janus manages, feeling like he’s shaking apart. 

Virgil huffs, “Sure, says the liar,” and turns to Patton. Janus tries to pull him back, but Virgil ignores the touch. “You said you just Fell?”

“Deceit helped me,” Morality says, and Janus flinches so hard that Virgil jolts in apparent sympathy. He’s always so jumpy. “But he wanted my feathers because he wanted to protect you, and it turns out I kind of need those too, so I thought if I just took them like Roman said and woke you up, we could all get what we want.”

“You tried to take his feathers?” Virgil asks incredulously. His hand runs through Janus’s hair, perfectly grounding. “That’s low even for you.”

“The snake is cursed to crawl in the dirt,” Janus spits, still horribly distant. “Is it really so surprising? You were gone.”

“Creep,” Virgil sighs. “Can you help him at all? I get it if you can’t, but it seems like you aren’t so keen on murdering us both in order to devour our power, so I figure I might as well ask. He seriously looks like he got beat up by an acid storm.”

Morality kneels in front of them and puts a gentle hand on Janus’s shoulder. Warmth flows from the touch, dislodging pain and leaving stark relief behind; Janus shivers, relaxing without meaning to into Virgil’s hold, and Patton gives a wavering smile. “There, that’s better, isn’t it? Now no one has to be scared or running through storms without an umbrella.”

“What would an umbrella do against acid,” Janus says at the same time Virgil asks, “Angels have umbrellas?”

“Well, umbrella or not, this angel’s got you covered,” Patton says, and Janus nearly laughs. Sin, it’s still so hard to breathe. Patton frowns, glancing between them, and adds, “Should I… leave you two alone? I know it’s not really my house and I shouldn’t still be here, but-”

“There’s probably still food in the cabinets,” Virgil cuts him off, then looks at Janus, makes a face, and says, “Or somewhere. Help yourself.”

“I’ll come back if you need me,” Patton says, sounding bizarrely relieved, and disappears. Janus releases a breath he didn’t know he was holding and slumps into Virgil’s hold. Virgil drops him.

“ _Ow_ ,” Janus complains on reflex, glaring at him. 

“I just woke up and every part of me feels weird, give me a break.” Virgil glowers around them at the bedroom, unlit and obviously untouched. “Janus, what’s going on? Who is that guy? I get the whole angel thing, but last I saw you were friendly with those guys. And the last thing I remember is-” He falters. “Not good.”

“You’ve been asleep for over a year,” Janus says, bile in his throat just at the mention of it. “I couldn’t wake you up, and the wards were failing. Please _do_ resent me for taking drastic measures.” 

Virgil says, shoving him lightly, “Once the options were me or cannibalism, you really should’ve just let me _die_.”

“Without you here to tell me that, how could I have?” Janus chokes back a hysterical laugh. “I’m a demon, Virgil, in case you hadn’t noticed. I don’t feel such things. Without the specter of your judgment hanging over me like the Sword of Damocles, I never would have bothered staying this feeble.”

“Great, so I’m the _bogeyman_.” Virgil is silent for a long moment. Janus catalogues the rise and fall of his chest, the hunch of his shoulders, the fall of his bangs over his eyes and how he brushes them impatiently aside, soaks it up like a plant after a long drought. How could he have forgotten how animated Virgil is? The human can’t go a second without twitching or scowling or huddling further into his clothes. Janus should find him his cloak before he spontaneously combusts from exposing too much skin to open air. “A _year?”_

“Logan _didn’t_ have to move his bar, but he still lives. Roman isn’t actually a fallen angel and may also, possibly, want to kill me on sight. Business is starting to pick up along the docks, and I have a suspicion that the tunnels expanded-”

“Hold on, go back,” Virgil says, jolting up and staring at him. He looks like a nerve-wracked wraith. “Princey’s what? He wants _what?”_

“I wouldn’t have run through a storm willy- _nilly_ ,” Janus says scathingly. “I was under the impression that Patton was going to kill you.”

“What, because Princey tried to kill _you_ first?” Virgil shrills. “Unholy fuck, I’m going to make him regret he was created. That’s what was wrong with your neck, isn’t it, and your wing, too, I knew you would’ve caught yourself if you’d just fallen off a ledge or something. He left you in a hellstorm?”

“To be charitable, he had just learned that I intended to steal an angel’s power,” Janus says, basking in the jittery rant. “I can imagine in the abstract why that may have upset him.”

“Right,” Virgil mutters, rubbing his arms. He flops down on the floor, making Janus jump, and says from his prone position, “We’re totally letting that guy stay if he wants to.”

“Morality?” 

“The guy whose feathers you tried to steal, yeah. Pretty sure even just attempting covers him for like three years of rent. Also, he seems super new and like he doesn’t hate you for some reason, and we need a roommate.”

“We do not,” Janus says, aghast. “Argue this for other reasons, but don’t bring up a roommate like we have to pay _rent_.”

“We need a roommate so if I get killed for real you don’t immediately go off like twelve separate deep ends, the last one into the Marianas Trench,” Virgil says, staring at the ceiling. Janus huffs a laugh, starting to believe. “Do you know what’s been going on upstream?”

“Broad strokes. None of it is stressful at all.”

“Don’t remind me,” Virgil groans, “and by that I mean do. Do remind me. If the docks are busier now, we’d better at least know why.”

“I’ll start with the most important rumors first,” Janus says just to see Virgil plunk his head against the floor. “That impostor the Marquis of Snakes has started going around dressed as a nun of all things, for one-"

Virgil throws a pillow at him and misses by three feet. Janus snickers, hears footsteps as something falls over and is quickly righted upstairs, sees his human startle- and for a moment it’s like the never-ending horror of Hell parts, letting him see behind the curtains, and morphs the infernal red of their existence to the soft light of early dawn.

**Author's Note:**

> TW: coma, implied/referenced torture, cannibalism (sort of), graphic depiction of injury, panic attacks, breakdowns, implied/referenced suicide


End file.
